Who is BU? Possible CF-ery over bill splitting

[IHaveAGreyLamp]

I’m interested in peoples opinions on how a restaurant bill should have been split as currently my family are 50/50 as to who is BU!

Last week my parents, DSis and her husband, toddler DD and I went for a family lunch.

DParents had two bottles of wine. BIL had four pints. DSis had a glass of Prosecco and then two glasses of wine from the wine on the table. I had one glass of Prosecco. DSis and my Dad had liqueur coffees also.

After a lovely meal, toddler DD got a bit fractious and tired. It was taking ages to get the bill so I asked if my parents would cover my bill so I could make a swift exit and that I’d pay them when I saw them again.

Yesterday I gave my mum £30, to cover my food and one Prosecco and also a bit towards a tip.

DM is now demanding an extra £15 because they ‘split’ the bill between the 5 of us. I don’t even mind splitting a bill evenly (even if someone people had more courses etc) but given that they all had a lot to drink and I didn’t, I don’t think I should be contributing to the booze that the rest of them had!

DSis and BIL doesn’t think it’s fair I should be made to pay for the drink, but my parents do. Usually if I’m out for a meal I will happily split it if things are fairly even, and if I’d had even just one glass of wine from the bottle I would have just split it without argument (I wouldn’t be whipping out the calculator to see how much I owed for one glass of wine from a bottle type of thing!) But I’m a bit miffed because if I’ve been drinking at dinner and others haven’t, I will always say it’s not fair for the non-drinkers to pay for alcohol and will usually insist that the drinks bill is sorted separately to the food bill.

What do you think? Should I have been funding their lunch time drinking and just sucked it up? Or are they being cheeky?

YABU- You should have accepted the splitting of the bill including the booze
YANBU- It’s unfair of them to expect you to pay for the booze when you didn’t have any

The only thing that's unreasonable is that you didn't agree on what would be done with the bill beforehand. Now, your parents have obviously covered £15 more than you've given them on your behalf.

I never go anywhere without knowing who is paying and what portion but it's only as I've got older I've learned to stand up for myself when it's unfair.

I did once pay £30 for a meal when my tomato pasta and tap water (that I'd got as I knew things were tight) came to £6.50. When splitting was suggested I didn't have the balls to speak up even though the rest had 3 courses plus sides and alcohol.

Your parents sound tight-fisted and greedy especially after letting your Dsis and Dbil pay for their drinks afterwards. I'd tell them they'll have a long wait if they think you have money to waste on funding their boozing.

Yanbu. I hate this sort of messing, it is always the fuckers who eat and drink the most who insist on splitting the bill.

I"m of the split the bill equally and it will all come out in the wash brigade.

nah, I've been caught out like this before so now I say (and it helps being in Germany because this is absolutely normal here) "everyone pay for their own" and that's how i pay mine (and add a tip)

Years ago i knew a lot of people who worked in highly paid jobs, whereas i was still in training and my DP earned very little. We liked to go out with them, but were careful not to spend outside our means. One time we'd had dinner - we stuck to one main each and one glass of wine - and the others finally expected us to split what would have worked out for us at nearly 50 quid each. I actually lost a few "friends" that night for telling them to fuck the fuck off with their eating and drinking at my expense, and it actually felt like a relief.

@LindaEllen

The only thing that's unreasonable is that you didn't agree on what would be done with the bill beforehand. Now, your parents have obviously covered £15 more than you've given them on your behalf.

I never go anywhere without knowing who is paying and what portion but it's only as I've got older I've learned to stand up for myself when it's unfair.

I did once pay £30 for a meal when my tomato pasta and tap water (that I'd got as I knew things were tight) came to £6.50. When splitting was suggested I didn't have the balls to speak up even though the rest had 3 courses plus sides and alcohol.

They haven’t covered £15 more on ops behalf. She didn’t consume the items. They’ve covered some of the alcohol their ds and ddil consumed.

You didn’t have the guts to speak up. Op did. She left in a rush she was not consulted on the bill splitting.

Yeah had this recently - I’m pregnant and not drinking and the group were like let’s just split the bill evenly - I just laughed and said well you guys can split the alcohol between yis but I’m not paying towards that bit!

They all agreed immediately of course!

Deffo don’t think you should have to pay towards that

Those that demand the group to pay equal amounts are always the ones that drink lots of alcohol! I would’ve just paid for my meal and 1 glass of Prosecco. Nothing more.

I would be shocked. I can't believe a mother acting like this. It would completely change the way I felt about her. (My mother was wonderful and generous and in her later years I returned the favour.) On the other hand, your mother had a bottle of wine with lunch and then had drinks afterwards. The fact that she wasn't carried out comatose afterwards suggests she often drinks a lot which may impair her judgement or she may be trying to rationalise her drinking as normal when it's really not.

Do you have a good relationship with your parents? My dad would never accept the money off me and certainly wouldn’t demand more. In the same vein if he left before paying I’d cover him and not ask for the money. For what it’s worth even when people have drank more than me (when I’m pregnant and not drinking) I always split the bill.

YANBU but if you pay less doesn't that mean your DSIS and BIL should put in more too? I'm not really sure how you work it out unless you all pay for what you had but it's difficult to sort out after when you left

You should have worked out what you had and left £30 at the time so you could argue it out then

YANBU. Has happened twice with DP's family. I am teetotal. First time out with 3 other couples for a birthday, birthday girl ordering massive cocktails and the other couples all had 3 courses, me and DP 2 courses, everybody bar me had alcohol, bill was spilt evenly between the 4 couples, bit annoying but let it go.

Next time it happened, again DP's family birthday, about 14 of us, 3 pre teens drinking non alcoholic cocktails, everyone else bar me and DP on alcohol, expensive dishes, loads of sides. Me an DP had 2 courses and shared a side, non alchoholic drinks. MIL when sorting the bill asked us for £50 MORE than we'd spent. She'd worked out the cost of the whole bill between the adults, even though 3 kids were siblings, and expected their stuff to be covered as part of the bill split. Had to put my foot down that time. We paid around £50, not sure who put the rest in. Not been out for a meal with them since.

Do you have a good relationship with your parents? My dad would never accept the money off me and certainly wouldn’t demand more. In the same vein if he left before paying I’d cover him and not ask for the money. For what it’s worth even when people have drank more than me (when I’m pregnant and not drinking) I always split the bill.

I'm like this with my parents too. We are all offering to pay the whole bill rather than asking for more

BUT I don't agree with having to pay for other's drinks or splitting the bill if one or more have quite a more more than the rest

Your parents are so tight and unfair! Can’t imagine fighting over who owed what for dinner though. When my family and I go out we take turns to treat each other.

I wouldn’t bother going out for dinner with them all as a group anymore. Coffees and once lockdown lifts dinners at home so there isn’t this petty bill splitting.

YANBU at all, but how far you fight it, I am not sure.

Once you had clearly left what you had worked out was your cost it was really unreasonable for them to not split the remainder, given that they were all drinking.

Whether you chalk it up to experience, or fight is up to you, you know your family best and how extreme the ramifications would be.

I would hand over the £15 and say "I was careful to cover all my costs and tip because you were all drinking so much I assumed we were doing alcohol separately But since you decided otherwise, here you go!"

The sheer shame of them if they accept it, but they sound....difficult.

Your DSis could have spoken up at the bill splitting stage, and said 'but GreyLamp only had one glass of prosecco'. She and BIL could have said 'but we drank loads, we should put in extra'. But hey ho. They were probably all too drunk to work it out by then.

I agree with you OP. Split the food bill evenly and then the drinks bill evenly but only between the drinkers. Sometimes you'll end up paying more than you should because you order a smaller meal etc but no one should end up massively out of pocket each time if that's the method you use.

What's been said between you and your parents since they asked for the money?

These are your parents. Pay the 2^&% bill!
How much have they forked out on meals for you, growing up!?

BarbaraofSeville

How come you quoted the comment with my response to it and not just the original comment, when you were responding to that and not to what I had added?!

@willloman

These are your parents. Pay the 2^&% bill! How much have they forked out on meals for you, growing up!?

Seriously? Do parents really keep tabs on what they spend on feeding the children they chose to have so they can require repayment later?

Are you the Op's mum? If so, lay off the booze for a while, your liver needs a rest.

It's always the people who drink loads and have expensive meals that think splitting the bill ruins a meal and is petty.

@ZoeTurtle

It's always the people who drink loads and have expensive meals that think splitting the bill ruins a meal and is petty.

To clarify, I mean splitting the bill according to what was consumed rather than splitting it evenly. It's always greedy people who want it to be split evenly.

YANBU but between lunch and the bar afterwards they put away a hell of a lot of drink. Maybe they've normalised that as a reasonable amount of alcohol so they're coming from that angle? Do they normally drink so much?

It is customary to split bill evenly unless agreed in advance, then you could have your own bill. Suggest you do that going forward and it avoids any problems

That may be the custom with you and your family/friends, but it's just one of the two common ways of paying when in a group at a restaurant - it's not a universal rule that everybody should feel duty-bound to follow.

Quite often, the exact same people who want to take advantage of others will insist that it's customary to split the bill when it's to their benefit, but will oddly refuse to follow this supposedly established custom when doing so would work to their disadvantage.

Maybe they've normalised that as a reasonable amount of alcohol so they're coming from that angle?

That's a very good point. Maybe they wonder why OP is 'only' having one glass of alcohol and is she trying to deliberately evade paying her reasonable share (as they might perceive it). If they are functioning alcoholics, they probably have very little idea who had what anyway.

In fact, it might be their way of justifying to themselves that the wine purchased was split between a reasonable number of people rather than just the two of them feeding their habit - the habit/addiction that they might be in denial about.

SorrelBlackbeak:
I'm not the mum (or dad) and
am teetotal myself.
So if the parents had eaten an expensive vegan dish you would be happy for the bill to be split?
You're right, parents don't tally up the costs.
Again: Pay the ^%5! Bill ! Such ungracious quibbling is appalling.